Making a return, questions!Follow

feels fine. I mean the world outside Abyssea in 30+ zones is kind of empty but that is cause most people are in Abyssea.

It's possible to reach 75, hell 90, in a single day of partying once you hit 30, but doing it that way isn't really recommended.

The level cap is now 90; it is supposed to be 99 eventually. Abyssea is the last three mini expansions. Each expansion buys you three zones. Abyssea is the new (much faster) way to exp/merit. Abyssea, revolves around getting monsters to drop the right chests. Some chests drop time extensions (the Time limit inside is initially 30-120mintues, but it can be extended infinitely, as far as I know) Some drop exp, cruor (the "currency" of abyssea, similar to ISP/CP/AN), temp items, or normal items. Others give you lights, which depending on the color can effect anything to chest drop rate to the amount of exp you get.

Most of the new gear, including AF3 and new weapons, come from NMs or doing trials in abyssea. On Asura, at least, there are usually shout groups forming in Port Jeuno, or it is easy to make your own shout group(PJ is the new WG, because the npcs that teleport you to abyssea are there). In addition to gear, hunt down abyssites and atmas, which are enhancements that make you much, much stronger inside aybssea.

To get started, talk to Joachim in PJ. He's standing right next to the top of one of the stairwells. Get a traverser's stone, and head to a maw. (each stone initially gives you 30 minutes, and Joachim gets a new one every 20 hours initially iirc. He can store several at a time, but will only let you hold 3 at a time. The limit sounds annoying at first, but once you get into the swing of things, you have plenty of time to spare.)

There's a lot more I could say but I see this turning into a wall of text quickly. Here is the wiki page if you want to know more. http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Abyssea

Edited, Apr 1st 2011 10:37am by RizzoRazzle

I guess one piece of advice I forgot to give is to focus on killing zone bosses (9 total, one for each) and caterae (sp?) (6 total. There are a lot of shout groups being made for them all of the time, too. Killing zone bosses will allow you to equip more atmas at a time. Without any zone bosses, you will only be able to equip one. All 15 kills are required to fight Shinryu (again, sp?). Among other things, killing Shinyru allows you to buy brews at affordable prices. Brews last 3 minutes and give you this: http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Transcendency

Killing everything will also allow you to get Discernment, which helps a LOT with staggering.

Staggering is using a certain, random spell or ws to make an NM more likely to drop something. People also call it red!!, blue!!, and yellow!!, because when you successfully stagger an NM, colored exclamation points appear. Yellow is triggered by casting the right spell, and makes the NM more likely to drop common drops. Red is triggered by using the right elemental weapon skill, and makes the NM more likely to drop key items. Blue is triggered by using the right physical weapon skill, and makes the NM more likely to drop rare drops. Discernment will tell you which element yellow/red staggers correspond to and which weapon blue stagger corresponds to, narrowing the search down quite a bit.

It works because you kill things so quickly. The exp/mob starts out pretty low, but builds up to cap at around 600-650 per mob. There are no chains to worry about, so that number won't drop, plus you're killing 2-3 mobs every minute, so you see that it adds together pretty quickly. I've had as high as 120k exp/hr in a group before (though in my experience the average is closer to 80k).

It isn't clear whether you are starting anew, or returning with a high level job - but unless you already have a job at level 75 . . . all these comments about Abyssea are completely inappropriate to your situation. Yes, you can get crazy-fast experience in Abyssea parties. But, at level 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85 you have limit-break challenges.

So, separate from the question of whether it is a good idea of leaching experience from 30 to 90 in a single day - I'm saying it realistically ain't possible. Plus, it isn't practical, in the sense that virtually no party would let you in as a level 30 unless you had the cruor (Abyssea currency) to buy keys to unlock chests - and you wont have cruor.

So, although it is hypothetically possible - it isn't worth spending any time talking about. I wish you guys would stop giving new / returning players worthless advice like this.

I'm in the same boat as Drusenija. Though Drusenija seems to at least know about Abyssea and how it works to some degree. I have been gone for a very long time (Left not long after CoP came out and only really reached job levels to the mid-40s.) and I am starting over with a new account.

What are the best ways to level outside of Abyssea for those in situations like mine?